Use of Facebook for Checking News is Declining: Study

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After numerous fake news scandals, privacy concerns, and other irregularities, people’s trust on Facebook is at a record low.

According to the latest study, people are relying less on Facebook to check the latest news. This research was conducted by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) and Kantar Media, a data company, as they studied the latest trends of user activity on various social networks.

Facebook Scandals

As seen in the graph above, Facebook’s usage for checking news has declined significantly ever since it came to limelight for privacy concerns and spreading fake news. The platform has been used extensively by people and agencies to spread fake news, mostly for advertisement purposes, as well as to influence people’s opinions.

Facebook itself has been scrutinizing content posted on its platform and has been getting rid of posts or pictures that are against its revised content policy. In the past, some Russian entities used Facebook to influence electoral voters, by creating numerous fake accounts to spread fake news.

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This caused problems for elections in the US. Other than that, the network also faced difficulties during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when private information of millions of people was leaked.

This was such a huge breach that it lead the UK to change its privacy law, that now binds all businesses that interact with UK citizens to be more transparent with their private data.

Nevertheless, a social network the size of Facebook makes a much larger impact to a society than you’d imagine. It’s even making people politically stupid.